Facebook Allows Advertisers to Target Users Based on Offline Spending Habits | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Allows Advertisers to Target Users Based on Offline Spending Habits

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37 pointsprostoalex12 comments

"Google is effective when people search for things they already want to buy and then see ads for relevant products. Facebook is better for educating consumers about products they might want to buy in the future."

Funny, this divide probably falls exactly where many people draw the line between "Good" and "Bad" advertising. The former is solving a problem, the latter is convincing you that you have a problem they can solve.

I'm not searching for a phone app that lets me call and pay for a livery cab from wherever I am. I'm also not searching for an electric car. Or a vacuuming robot. I didn't even know these things existed until after they did.

It's "bad advertising" to tell me "hey, this thing you don't know to search for is out there"?

Actually good vs. bad advertising is tricky.

When ads are very targeted and try to show you things the system thinks you are looking for, you get a small number of relevant ads vs. a bunch of spam ads. In that sense, they are actually very good and can be useful for some people. Sometimes, they can even help you discover things you couldn't find through a direct search.

On the other hand, the data collection and analysis you have to do in order to target effectively seems bad to most people.

I'd rather have my privacy and control of my own data than get targeted ads, but most people don't seem to have the same awareness or concern.

In any event, that quote isn't quite accurate. Behaviorally targeted ads are the result of data obtained from people actively searching for something or browsing as well. (Behavioral targeting is really where the money in in FBX). They may be showing you something you don't know you want, but more often, they are showing you what the system thinks you were looking for but couldn't find.

I don't understand how the latter is "bad" advertising. I don't think in 1999, people would have been searching for "where to buy a smartphone"

I'm sure there are plenty of products are out there that you would yell "TAKE MY MONEY" when you see them but you are not aware of those. Why making new market is bad?

So all the machine learning Amazon does in suggesting products I might want or like is "bad?" Give me a break -- I know there are a lot of Google Fan-folk on HN, but to say there's a "Good" | "Bad" advertising binary is just silly.

Personally I've found the lookalike audiences to be much more effective as a targeting strategy to increase conversion rate and volume on Facebook than the Datalogix/Acxiom type data. Perhaps I need to give it another chance. Also, not everyone has access to the data needed to make a good lookalike audience on Facebook.

My only issue with this is that it's not expressly stated; Sure, it's probably indirectly stated through the Terms we all agreed to without reading.

I don't think they would even need to get your agreement to do this. Getting data from other vendors and matching it to their own doesn't breach any existing privacy laws, is my guess.

>...doesn't breach any existing privacy laws...

Maybe not laws, but certainly ethics and/or good practices regarding privacy. It falls under the whole "how we use your data" disclosure, much of which for some companies is just reassurance regarding how they don't use your data.

For me, when in doubt regarding inclusion, the guiding question should be, "would a reasonable person want to know we're doing this?"

You're making the mistake of applying ethical reasoning to soulless greed-heads. It's much simpler: "how much money can we make by doing this" vs. "how much would settling a class action suit cost, times the probability of having to settle."

Most of retailers have pretty broad privacy policies already

http://www.target.com/spot/privacy-policy#InformationShared

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